When the early stretches of today’s Stage 1 passed without incident—save the practically obligatory errant canine—some commentators seemed to settle into the notion that the long-anticipated crashes on the always thrilling (and extremely crowded) Dutch and Belgian roadways would not materialize. But beyond the calm facade were warning signs of the carnage to come. A…
Author: cosmo
A Prologue Of Couldnts
That’s what today’s stage—at least from the recaps, reports and clips through which I experienced it—seemed like to me. In the rain, many contenders couldn’t take risks. With no time bonuses in the coming days, sprinters couldn’t really justify a run for yellow. Over a pancake-flat parcours, climbers couldn’t make any statements. And with all…
How The Race Was Won – Rules of the Group Sprint
A little TdF preview for you, since the action in the early going is driven largely by the sprinters, and we be especially tightly scrutinized after the tremendous crash at the Tour de Suisse. The UCI’s rules on what it is and isn’t ok to do in a sprint are both poorly-written, and enforced in…
Pre-Race Jitters
Oh, Bill Strickland—you sir, are a troublemaker. Tweeting about RadioShack TdF exclusion rumors three days before the start of the race and giving everyone Puerto flashbacks. While I was very glad to see your attention-grabbing release of the eff-bomb quote from the epilogue of your book—it does take the tired pre-Tour mantra of choice up…
2010 Tour de France Versus Media Call
Versus hosted its media call for the 2010 Tour de France today, with Phil Liggett, Paul Sherwen, Tyler Farrar, Christian VandeVelde and Levi Leipheimer all on the line at one point or another. Highlights for me were Tyler saying the exposure to Dutch roads at the Giro will probably make things worse for the Tour,…
Please Don't Read Beyond the Byline
Bah. You know, back in the day, this sort of thing required at least a modicum of skill. You’d look at the calendar, notice the week-and-a-half that had passed without any real news, see the Tour was about to start and you’d write something like “I sense a dope story is near”. People were once…
The Luckiest Man in the Peloton
I’ve been doing a little video work on some sprinting footage ahead of the Tour de France. I’ve looked through the Cavendish crash more times than I care to remember, but I still cannot get over the break Juan Antonio Flecha catches as the race just dissolves in front of him. Here’s a quick video…
Conflict of Interest
I realize I burn off a lot of text trying to drive the point home. This screenshot probably does a better job:
The Cyclocosm Audio Mailbox System
Ever since I began the making How The Race Was Won videos, my propensity for mispronunciation has become more and more embarrassing. In many ways, it’s not my fault—well over 90% of the information I consume on the sport comes from web text, which doesn’t do a great job of conveying linguistic nuance. In the…
It Must Be Tour Time
It must be getting close to Tour time because emails from PR firms are starting to roll in again. It’s a strange distribution model, really—especially for books. Come up with an idea, send out a bunch of letters to convince some company to pay you to write it, and have that company in turn hire…